The Corpsewood

2. The Monoliths

October 15th 1887

It is not unusual for me to dream of Hallenbeck's chimera, and, dearest, that first night I visited it again quite clearly. I remembered the beast fondly the first few times, being that I was only an impressionable eight years of age when I encountered it. Not to mention that the creature had also been – to my father at least – something of a marvel. Come to think of him I don't recall much else of the man; perhaps only his modest choice of footwear and the way his smile never reached further than his moustache. But I do frequently dream of the inner city zoo that housed the beast, and how it came to be that Henry Hallenbeck had nicknamed me Jack.

Back then, not only was Hallenbeck an explorer, zoologist and, spoken behind hands, at the mercy of a gambling habit, he was also a self-styled Anomaly and Chimera Keeper. I asked him once when I was young why he'd thought to embroider ACK into his breast pocket and he explained to me what the acronym stood for. He'd laughed when I stumbled over repeating the words.

"And you, boy," he stooped down to say, "may one day be my Junior. J.A.C.K. How do you like the sound of that, Little Jack? Would you like to be an Anomaly and Chimera Keeper too?"

Needless to say I'd nodded vehemently, hardly realising the perversion it took for a once God-fearing man to distort the Lord's design and create his own mangled abominations. It is no accident Hallenbeck chose for his first monstrosity to combine the wolf with the lamb, as if to announce his own warped morals.

But I digress, my dear, because I did not dream of Hallenbeck's chimera to speak poorly of my departed friend. It is said to dream of a wolf symbolises survival and pride, but to dream of a lamb foretells my own vulnerability. So what would you say it means to dream of Hallenbeck's chimera? Of that limp and hairless canid sporting the head and forelimbs of a young sheep from its spine?

When first I woke on that second morning in Dartmoor, I thought not much else of it but a frightful testament to the man who created it. It is only after I followed the lead to Wistman's Wood that I reassessed its meaning.

The morning sky fared brighter than the one preceding it, though only marginally. The clouds at least kept to themselves on their eastward march across the countryside, though the terrain had grown dark with groundwater and an earthy odour clung to the air. It was still no less a refreshing break from the slog and churn of the city.

I helped myself to the cold toast and marmalade set on a tray outside my door and made a mental reminder to thank whoever had left it. I had not heard a knock, or perhaps I had slept so heavily while dreaming of the chimera pacing in its cage that I had altogether missed it. I did not eat my breakfast, I must add. The bread had turned green at the corner and there was an unpleasant film in the marmalade pot that I did not fancy the look of. The milk was a little sour, but the tea and sugar were palatable. I figured why the little inn no longer boasted the same custom it did in its prime, but I did not openly complain. Not out of good-nature, might I assure you, but because I could not find any member of staff in the entire establishment to complain to.

Short of searching for their secret smoking room, I instead redressed appropriately for the outdoors and set on up the hill. Beardown Tor, the locals called it. The climb is none too taxing, but I still found myself lost for breath at the sheer breadth of the moors. The score of mounds and hollows exceed counting in a single day. Its brochure beauty aside, there is something else that local texts fail to describe: the presence of the place. It was if... dare I speak of it... I was not alone. I could not shake the feeling that I had ascended the hills with some unseen companion, of whom I could feel bearing down on my shoulders if I didn't keep moving.

And then there are the monoliths. Great contorted claws of grey rock standing upright at nine, ten, eleven feet, or more! I could not tell you why they were there, what purpose they served, or which mesolithic population erected them, but it is as if they stand sentinel to some ritualistic importance to the place, to which I am uninitiated. I wish one day to revisit them with you, dear, so you might see them. Perhaps when the summer comes around again you and I will find the means and funds to venture farther than Whitechapel.

And yes, I did touch the stones. Though with nothing physically holding me back, I still could not depart from the idea that my unseen watcher scowled as I ran my fingertips over the undressed granite. And... Perhaps I should not write this in the middle of the night when the imagination often runs wild, but the way the winds atop the hills sometimes catch the monoliths, I could have sworn it sounded like voices.

Sometime around early afternoon I doubled back to the woodland Hallenbeck had described in his written correspondences with me. He'd headed out to Wistman's Wood, he'd said, but I had not heard much else from him since I quit his grisly pursuits. It was only when old Emory's boy shared with me the news of his death that I found the circumstances queer. If you recall a time not so long ago during Emory Jr's last visit, I had ushered you away into another room when my colleague began speaking in hushed tones. You asked me afterwards what manner of discussion had followed after I insisted you leave, but I was not honest with you, my love, and I'm sorry.

It had been a Dutch colleague of Hallenbeck's, an amatuer athropologist by the name of Rudolf Haas, who found our missing friend dead in Wistman's Woods. I will not go into detail of the state in which he was found, lest I cause you any upset, but the man had been found impaled on a tree branch high above the earth, with no means to explain how he got there. More curiously still, the autopsy did not reveal anything to Emory that he could not immediately see, leading him to believe Hallenbeck had indeed died from the injury alone...

But it does not end there. Days later, Emory found Haas dead in precisely the same manner, and his autopsy revealed nothing Emory had not already seen in Hallenbeck. So it was with great trepidation and some amount of deceit that I made the journey to Dartmoor before the snowfall bars entry to the little wood on the moors.

I visited Dartmoor just as I promised Jacob Emory I would. Local brochures speak at no great length of the place, and though I thought at first it may be for lack of interest, I am now led to believe it a deliberate act not to inspire curiosity. It is an uncanny and bizarre place, my dearest. No larger or more noticeable than a spilt wine drop on my map, but the atmosphere there is suffocating. Everywhere I looked grew twisted oaks, hunched over in cloaks of green moss; their roots exposed like great, coiled boas. The fog there is dense and earthy, as if the forest breathes.

My intention was not to stay for long, but I found myself ducking under low-hanging limb after low-hanging limb for hours. It's safe to say I was ill-prepared without a compass and the cloud cover did not lend me any clues as to the sun's position. I happened upon a few odd stones that helped me find my way eventually. I knew, at least, that I was going in circles, as I had passed the squat boulder with the eye carving three times. Curiously though, I could've sworn the stone changed direction, as if the eye had been watching me go. Or perhaps it was some trick of the shadows, or merely my imagination. I favour the latter – after a while, the marbled terrain of green and grey in that forest is sure to conjure patterns that are not truly there.

Or that is what I keep telling myself. Surely it must have been the same phenomenon when I thought I saw that body hanging there.

Worry not from these ramblings, dearest. I maintain that I was still not as well rested as I would have liked from the journey and even less well fed after breakfast. Perhaps it is merely an upset stomach on sour milk that disorientated me and meant I once again lost track of the hours. It was long past dark before I finally made my descent of Beardown Tor, rather annoyed with myself that I had managed to do exactly what I had so strongly tried to avoid.

Yours, with love.